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The rising Kingdom of Lydia, ruled by the famed King Croesus, conquered these Greek city-states. The city-states were able to secure a great deal of autonomy and continued to flourish, under the Lydians. This arrangement was upset by the rise of the Persian Empire, based in modern Iran, which is often regarded as the first ‘World-Empire.’ <ref>Holland, p 3</ref> Cyrus the Second, sometimes known as the Great, conquered the Median and Neo-Babylonian Empires and annexed the kingdom of Lydia, thereby establishing the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian Empire.
The Greek cities in Ionia were also annexed by Cyrus. The Achaemenid monarch and his successors respected local customs and religions and gave regions in their realms’ considerable autonomy.<ref> Fine, JVA The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History (Harvard, Harvard University Press, 1983) </ref>. However, the Ionian Greeks who were very urbanized and their democratic political systems proved very difficult to fit into this system. To control the Greek cities, Cyrus appointed his son, Darius also adopted local rulers with dictatorial powers, who were answerable to a Persian satrap or governor and this policy. This caused great unrest in cities such as Ephesus and Colophon, which had traditionally been democracies’, but this was ignored by the local Persian Satrap.<ref> Hornblower, Simon The Greek World: 479–323 BC (4 ed.) (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011),p. 2 </ref>
In 500 BC the Satrap of Asia Minor held an assembly with the rulers who governed the Ionian cities in the name of Darius. There was increasingly rivalry among the tyrants, as they were known, and each sought to expand their territories at the expense of their neighbors. To preserve peace and stability in Ionia, the rulers were obliged to ally and foreswore to attack each other. However, in BC 499, Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus sought to conquer the independent island of Naxos and add it to his territories. He tried to win support from his fellow Ionian tyrants’, but they refused. Aristagoras then secured some powerful Persians support and sought to conquer Naxos in the name of Darius.<ref>Herodotus, v, 118</ref>
====Impact on Ionia====
[[File: Ionian four.jpg|200px|thumb|left| 18th-century painting of the great Ionian philosopher Heraclitus]]
The Greek-city states managed to recover quickly, and they were soon able to secure a great level of autonomy. The Persian Empire was a de-centralized Empire, and they did not seek to rule the Ionians directly .<ref>Herodotus, v, 119</ref>. It was a tributary Empire and did not want to conquer lands and peoples but simply demanded that they pay taxes and provide their Satraps with soldiers and ships when requested. Darius wanted the city-states, to remain prosperous so that they could continue to provide him with tribute and especially ships. The Persian Emperor was a farsighted ruler, and his policy of clemency was to prove to be successful. During the two invasions of Greece, the Ionians provided their Persian overlords with sailors and ships. The number of ships vessels would indicate that they had recovered rapidly after the revolt. The cities continued to prosper for centuries, right down to the Byzantine Empire. They even remained culturally Greek for centuries.
====The End of the Ionian Enlightenment====
Ionia was one of the cradles of western philosophy and science .<ref> Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy (New York, Simon, and Schuster, 1999), p 12</ref>. Traditionally the Ionian cities, was where Greek science and philosophy began. This was due to the wealth of the city-states, freedom of thought and the influence of Babylon and Egypt intellectual traditions. Here for the first time in the West, individuals offered explanations for the origin of the world without recourse to some deity .<ref>Russel, p 14</ref>. They used reason and observation to develop theories on the nature of the world. Thales from Miletus (6th century BC) was probably the first philosopher and scientist in the western tradition. He argued that life came from the sea and was also an astronomer and he successfully predicted an eclipse. The philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras came from Samos. Xenophanes was another important philosopher who criticized Greek polytheism and was arguably the first monotheist.
The great revolt did not destroy the flourishing intellectual life of the region as seen in the works of the great philosopher Heraclitus or the writings of the historian and geographer Hecateus. However, the great revolt and the subsequent rule of tyrants forced many thinkers to leave.
====Recommended Reading====
*Rung, Eduard. "Athens and the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 508/7 BC: Prologue to the Conflict." <i>Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences </i> 6, no. 3 S2 (2015): 257. *McKirahan, Richard D. <i>Philosophy before Socrates: An introduction Introduction with texts Texts and commentary Commentary</i> (London, Hackett Publishing 2011) *Guth, Dina. "The'Rise and Fall’ of Archaic Miletus." <i>Historia </i> 66, no. 1 (2017): 2-20. *Greaves, Alan M. "Miletus" <i>The Classical Review </i> 53, no. 1 (2003): 137-139. *Wiesehöfer, Josef. "Greeks and Persians." <i>A Companion to Archaic Greece </i> (2009): 162-185.
====References====
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